May 31, 2020: We’ve Got Spirit, Yes, We Do!
We’ve Got Spirit, Yes, We Do!
Acts 2:1-13
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
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I wasn’t a cheerleader in high school, but I remember one cheer from those days. It was the only cheer I can remember that brought both sides of the ball into it. At a lull in the action on the field or on the court, the cheer team would lead the fan base:
We’ve got spirit, yes, we do!
We’ve got spirit, how ‘bout you?
Not to be outdone, the other side would counter:
We’ve got spirit, yes, we do!
We’ve got spirit, how ‘bout you?
That would go back and forth for a bit, until each side would yell back simultaneously:
We’ve got more!
We’ve got more!
We’ve got more!
Future civilizations will surely look back on video footage of us doing that and find us so strange.
Today our scripture lesson reminds us about some who had the spirit, the Holy Spirit to be exact.
You may remember last week we saw the resurrected Lord taken up in a cloud to heaven after giving the disciples a promise. Do you remember what the promise was? You will receive power, in the Greek “dunamis” from which we get our English word “dynamite.” Jesus left them with a promise that they would receive explosive power, and that with that power, Jesus told them “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” And then he left.
The problem was, they were left with the promise but not the power.
So they returned to what they knew: they went back inside, to the room they knew, to the things they knew, to the ways they knew. They held an election. What could be more boring? More mundane? I can’t think of much. Yawn. Snooze.
They were living between the promise and the power.
They brought their impotent hope with them once again on the day of Pentecost—fifty days after Passover—forty-nine days after Easter Sunday when many of them first experienced the risen Lord. And with that impotent hope, they would huddle. Indoors.
We don’t know anything about powerlessly huddling indoors do we? (Note: sarcasm.)
These past couple of months many of us have been huddled up indoors, keeping to ourselves, unable to do much while a powerful, deadly virus makes its way through the human population. I’ve gotta tell ya, I don’t like it one bit. I don’t like the virus. I don’t like how much suffering it has caused. I don’t like how many beloved children of God it has killed. I don’t like the grief it has caused in its wake. I don’t like how much economic hardship it has brought. I don’t like how much fear it has spread. And though my personal suffering has been minimal compared to many, including some of you, I don’t like how utterly powerless I have felt. The thing I know how to do best, the way I know how to help is to offer hope to a gathered people. That has been largely been taken away from me these past couple of months.
I’ve been—we’ve been—huddled up. Powerless. Just like those first Jesus-followers.
Then came Pentecost.
Huddled up, “all together in one place,” Luke tells us. Fifty days after Passover. The Holy Spirit fell on them. The Spirit came in the form of two signs—classic signs throughout the scriptures when God’s Spirit arrives in a powerful way—first the violent wind, then in the form of fire as tongues of flame danced on the believer’s heads.
And they got . . . power! Dunamis! Explosive power!
And you know what that power enabled them to do? They wanted the power to overthrow the Roman government. (“Is now the time you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” they ask in the previous chapter.) Is that what they got? No. What did that Holy Spirit power enable them to do? To speak in different, wait, is this right? Let me check. Yes, this is right. The EXPLOSIVE POWER they received made them, er, bilingual. That EXPLOSIVE POWER gave them the ability to communicate across the dividing lines of nationality. Luke goes into great detail here. He wants to make sure who ever reads this history gets it:
“Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
This power to communicate across language barriers is the reversal to what happened centuries prior in the story of the tower of Babel. The Bible tells us that at one time, all the peoples of earth spoke the same language. They wanted to build a tower so big that it reached into heaven, and God wasn’t going to have it. So God confounded their language. This was the origin of the many different languages spoken in the world to this day. Like most origin stories, this story offered an explanation as to why things are the way they are.
Pentecost, and the disciples receiving the EXPLOSIVE POWER from the Spirit, reverses Babel. Holy Spirit power isn’t for domination but for communication.
It wasn’t just the power to speak, but the power to hear as well. Remember the onlookers asking, “How is it that each of us hears?” the onlookers ask in amazement. Of the two powers that fell on the people in Jerusalem that day, the power to hear may be even more important than the power to speak.
My friends, my heart is heavy on this Pentecost Sunday. We as a nation have lost the ability to speak so that others can hear. We have lost the ability to hear when others speak. Our world is on fire, but it’s not a fire from the Holy Spirit. This fire is from somewhere . . . something else.
This week we’ve seen Minneapolis burning. You’ve probably seen video footage of riots and looting there and in other cities. Maybe you saw the video that sparked the riots: the death of a black man, George Floyd, his neck squeezed under the weight of a police officer’s knee. This after several recent incidents: the death of Breonna Taylor at the hands of police in Louisville, Kentucky; the death of Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of white vigilantes in Georgia; the unjust actions of a woman in Central Park who called the police on black man because he asked her to put her dog on a leash. Their names: Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper. They share a last name. They do not share a common language.
Oh, they both speak fluent English. There was plenty of speaking, but zero hearing.
So we’ve seen Minneapolis burning. Protests sparked by a despicable string of hatred and violence against black Americans. The looting, the arson, the reckless endangerment of lives is similarly despicable. Why add to the pain and division? Why these riots?
In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
There is plenty of speaking, but little hearing between races. We need some of that Holy Spirit fire to fall down upon us and heal us from our divisions. We need some power, not for domination but for communication, that we might be able to speak, and perhaps more importantly, to hear, George Floyd when he cries, “I can’t breathe.”
So many people are crying out from under the weight of systemic oppression. Our collective failure to hear is a mark that we’ve lost some of that Holy Spirit power.
How desperately we need that Holy Spirit Pentecost-Power to help us hear our neighbor in need!
The Reverend Dr. Marion Bascom, a revered African American pastor within our International Council of Community Churches network, used to tell young preachers, “Give ‘em something to do, preacher!”
So here’s what I’m going to give you to do:
1. Speak. Speak words of solidarity on behalf of the oppressed. Speak words that empower marginalized people. Speak through the “dunamis” power of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost. Speak, child of God, speak!
2. Listen. Listen even more than you speak. Seek to understand more than to be understood. Listen even when you don’t understand. Listen without thinking about what you’ll say in reply. Seek out the voices of the marginalized even if they make you feel uncomfortable. Listen, child of God, listen!
3. Pray. Pray for marginalized people. Pray for oppressed people. Pray for unjust systems to be toppled. Pray for violence to cease. Pray for people to understand one another: black and white, male and female, gay and straight, poor and wealthy. And if you don’t know how to pray, open up your Bible—right there in the middle is an entire book of prayers called Psalms. Pray, child of God, pray!
I close with part a prayer from Psalm 10: 12-18—let this be our Pentecost plea today:
Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
“He won’t call me to account”?
But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked man;
call the evildoer to account for his wickedness
that would not otherwise be found out.
The Lord is King for ever and ever;
the nations will perish from his land.
You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that mere earthly mortals
will never again strike terror.